Getting Started for Site Owners

Creating and managing Medallions is easy

There are just a few quick and easy steps to setting up your Medallion on your site so your visitors can start supporting your site with Kachingle contributions. Here's what you'll find on this page:

  How the Medallion works  —  What visitors will see when kachingling your site
  Creating a Medallion  —  Quick, easy steps adding Kachingle to your site
  Placement of the Medallion  —  Suggestions for maximum Medallion visibility
  Launching & Marketing your Medallion  —  Introducing your visitors to the concept of Kachingle
  Getting Paid  —  How Kachingle pays Site Owners
  Using the Sites I Own tab  —  Managing Medallions, monitoring payments and statistics

If you don't find the answers you need here, please feel free to...

Browse the Sites I Own FAQ — to see answers to common questions from new Site Owners

Browse the Payments FAQ — to learn more about Pay-Ins, Payments, and Pay-Outs

Ask a Question — in our Community Forum staffed by the Kachingle Team

Email Customer Care — if your question requires privacy or you don't want to join the Community

(Community Forums are hosted by GetSatisfaction.com and may require separate login)

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How the Medallion works

The Medallion is a small Kachingle widget created by javascript code you place on the pages of your site. To see one in action, visit the Kachingle Corporate Blog.

Through the Medallion, Kachinglers can become ongoing contributors to your site with a single click.

Once they click, the Medallion coin turns green — which means your Medallion will now count their visits whenever they return. At the end of each month, the money they Pay-In to their Kachingle account will get distributed proportionally among the sites they kachingle — including yours — based on the frequency of their visits.

(FAQ: How are Kachingler's visits calculated and turned into Payments to my sites?)

Visitors to your site who are not yet Kachinglers can sign up for Kachingle through the Medallion as well.

And when visitors mouse-over the Medallion, they will see additional options, including the opportunity to see who else is kachingling to your site and to learn about your Kachinglers.

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Creating a Kachingle Medallion for your site (in four easy steps)

STEP ONE
When logged into your Kachingle Account, click the Site I Own tab, then click the "Add Site" button.

(Or click here to create a Medallion now)

STEP TWO
You will be taken to a form where you fill in information about your site, information for your PayPal payments, and upload a site logo.

When you're done, and click Save and Continue.



STEP THREE
Next you'll be taken to a page where you can generate your Medallion code based on the format of your site, and read instructions for how to add that code to your pages.

(See the next section, Placement of the Medallion, for suggestions on how to provide the best exposure for your Medallion.)

(FAQ: Can I put the Medallion on any type of site I control?)

STEP FOUR
Once you've posted the Medallion code to your site, just click the Verify button to confirm the Medallion is working correctly.

Now you're ready to start introducing your visitors to Kachingle as a way to support your site! See Launching & Marketing your Medallion below.

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Placement of the Medallion

If your site is built on a blogging platform (like Blogger, Wordpress or TypePad), the tools described above will help you create a widget and park it at the top of your sidebar.

If you have more flexibility and control of your own layout, Kachingle recommends placing the Medallion high on each page ("above the fold") in a conspicuous spot to draw Kachinglers' attention. (First we recommend you experiment a little - see Launching & Marketing your Medallion below.)

The Medallion is 234x60 in its closed state and expands in a layer over existing content in its open state, so you don't have to accommodate for its expansion in your layout.

(FAQ: What are the specs of the Kachingle Medallion?)

For maximum exposure, and to make sure every contributor's visits are counted no matter how they enter your site, we recommend the Medallion be included on every page. And because Kachingle is a whole new concept in crowdfunding, we recommend not grouping the Medallion with advertisements, lest it be mistaken for one.

Suggested locations include...
- In it own module at the top of a sidebar
- Opposite your logo at the top of the page
- Adjacent to headlines on permanent pages
- Textwrapped near the bylines of permanent articles
- Near primary navigation links

Do not place the Medallion...
- Inside a blog post that will move when new posts are created
- "Below the fold"
- At the bottom of a page

If you have other suggestions you'd like to share, or would like to see what other Site Owners have done with their Medallions, visit our MEDALLIONS: marketing, promotion and placement ideas forum.

DIFFERENT MEDALLIONS FOR DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF YOUR SITE?

Some Site Owners may be interested in creating independent Medallions to place on different sections of their sites, instead of using the same Medallion code site-wide.

Why? Let's say your site has a dozen blogs on wildly different subjects, written by different bloggers. You may want to offer Kachinglers the opportunity to support each blog separately. We call this Narrow Scope, because it allows you to follow your Kachinglers' support of your content more closely.

Narrow Scope

The Narrow Scope advantage is that it could potentially generate more revenue. When each blog has a separate Medallion, a Kachingler who reads multiple blogs is counted separately by each one — and could end up contributing to each one independently, meaning multiple streams of revenue from each Kachingler.

A possible disadvantage is that a Kachingler must "turn kachingling on" individually for each blog, and this may require specialized marketing of your Medallions to your visitors.

Wide Scope

Having one Medallion (placing the same Medallion code on every page) we call Wide Scope. The advantage of this approach is that Kachinglers only have to choose to kachingle your site one time, from any Medallion on your site — then anytime they visit any page with a Medallion, their visit will be counted toward their contribution.

How to decide

If you're considering both approaches, the question to ask yourself is this: Does the typical reader on my site consider its blogs (or sections) to be part of a group, or distinctly separate? A good example of the latter might be the highly-read blog of a famous newspaper (and TV) film critic, which may be read mostly by out-of-towners who have no interest in the rest of that newspaper's site.

Would your Kachinglers want their Kachingle profile show they're supporting your site as a whole, or would they consider themselves supporting some more specialized content? That distinction may help guide your decision between the Narrow Scope and Wide Scope approach to your Medallions.

Keep in mind there is no limit to the number of Medallions you can manage from Sites I Own, and that each Medallion can even have it's own separate PayPal account. (This makes accounting very easy if you are intending to distribute some or all of the funds to individual bloggers.)

If you have other suggestions you'd like to share, or would like to see what other Site Owners have done with their Medallions, visit our MEDALLIONS: marketing, promotion and placement ideas forum.

If you'd like more help, you can Ask a Question — in our Community Forum staffed by the Kachingle Team



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Launching & Marketing your Medallion

STAGE ONE - add marketing text on your site

First, place 1-2 lines of explanatory text above the Kachingle Medallion on all pages.

You can see good examples of text above Medallions at Center for Investigative Reporting and SteveOuting.com.

As seen on these two sites, the text above the Medallion should be linked to a blog post or feature article about adding the Kachingle Medallion to your site. With linked text, your users can easily click through to read what you have to say about Kachingle, then easily join as a Kachingler.

Some example text that could be placed above your Medallion include:

• Regular Visitor? Kachingle is a simple way to monetarily support [Your Site Name] and other sites you love.

• Support this site! Kachingle is a simple way to support [Your Site Name] and other sites you love

• Support [Your Site Name] via Kachingle

• Regular reader? Kachingle is a simple way to monetarily support [Your Site Name] and other sites you love

Then, write a blog post or feature article about why your site is using Kachingle.

At the end of the blog post or article, encourage users to join by mousing over the medallion on your blog page. (Note: Having them join by mousing over your Medallion is a better option than pointing them the Kachingle home page because 1) your branding is shown, and 2) after joining as a Kachingler they will be directed back to your site.

Here's an example of the kind of article you could post. Feel free to borrow concepts or entire text.

Support [Your Site Name] through micropayments with Kachingle!

Here at [Your Site Name] we want to produce quality content that continues to be valuable for you. To do this, continued funding is important, and after looking at different funding sources we recently chose Kachingle. Kachingle is an innovative social micropayment service that enables readers to easily make ongoing, voluntary micropayments to sites like ours.

Kachingle is simple, user-centric, and a user-controlled alternative to cumbersome subscriptions, paywalls, and pay-per-article plans that some media outlets are considering. It requires virtually no effort on your part - you just become a Kachingler, giving $5 a month through PayPal, and then click once on the Kachingle medallion on our site. No credit cards, no passwords, no separate accounts for every site you visit. Kachingle will keep track of your monthly visits to each of the sites you've selected, and at the end of the month, your monthly pay-in to Kachingle will be distributed proportionally among those sites.

We hope you will become a Kachingler, helping to support online journalism's future, including the time and resource intensive reporting that [Your Site Name] produces. After you become a Kachingler, you'll also be able to share the sites you support with colleagues, friends, and family, and turn them on to the sites you visit. You can join as a Kachingler by "mousing" over the Kachingle Medallion on this page and clicking on "Join Kachingle".

If you have questions check the FAQ, visit our Ask a Question in our Community Forum staffed by the Kachingle Team, or Email Customer Care.


STAGE TWO - outreach marketing

• Tweet about Kachingle from your corporate Twitter account.

For example: "You can now support [Your Site Name] with Kachingle micropayments! More 411 at [insert tiny URL to your blog post about Kachingle]

• If you send out an email newsletter, include information about your Kachingle partnership, and a link to your Kachingle blog post.

• Post info on your Kachingle partnership on your site Facebook page.

• If you have other methods of marketing new things about your site, use them to market your Medallion.

• Get employees to Tweet about Kachingle from their personal accounts.


STAGE THREE - "prime the pump" by recruiting Kachinglers

It is important that you "prime the pump" and recruit some Kachinglers.

Why?

Think of a crowded restaurant. If two restaurants are side-by-side, and one is jammed and the other empty, people still want to go to the crowded one because they figure that the crowd knows something about the quality of the food, service, etc.

Studies have actually proven this. For example...

In one social experiment, researchers placed a good musician in a New York City subway with a tip jar. When subway travelers saw an experimenter (posing as commuter) put money in the tip jar, the number of contributions increased by 800% over times when no one was seen tipping. The researchers' conclusion was that many people were inclined to contribute for a variety of reasons, but it was only when they saw the social signals -- "this is what people like me do" -- that they felt comfortable taking action. (From Applying (and Resisting) Peer Influence; V. Griskevicius, R.B. Cialdini, and N.J. Goldstein, Sloan Management Review (Winter 2008).

We believe that for individual blog sites, 25 Kachinglers is critical mass, and for larger sites, 100 Kachinglers are needed to jump-start Kachingle activity

You can prime the pump by recruiting Kachinglers in these categories:

• Recognizable people in your community. For example, if you are a local newspaper, it would greatly help if some of your Kachinglers were influential known community members, such as the mayor, city council members, the police chief, local well-known business people, educators, etc. If other people see that important people in the community have joined Kachingle to support your site, then they are more likely to also. This same strategy applies to a virtual "community", such as one focused on fractal designs, shedworking, photography, investigative journalism, etc.

• Employees. If you are uncomfortable suggesting your employees become Kachinglers on their own, consider setting up Kachingle accounts for them, using funds from your site's PayPal account (some of the money will come back to you when they kachingle your site).

• Colleagues & Friends. Recruit early Kachinglers from among the people you know best and can rely on for support. Below is an example email that you might customize and send out to potential Kachinglers:

Hello ______,

As you know, [Your Site Name] is an important contributor to the [Insert Name] community. To help it grow and continue to provide quality content, we have been exploring different sources of revenue generation. Recently we adopted the Kachingle service to enable readers and followers such as yourself to support our site. I am writing to encourage you to support [Your Site Name] by joining Kachingle.

[Your Site Name] chose Kachingle because it allows site visitors to view its content -- unlike subscriptions and pay-per-article schemes -- and then decide whether or not to contribute. The Kachingle service also enables readers to contribute in the same easy-to-use way to other online sites using Kachingle. Readers are able to reward quality content without signing up for a subscription at each and every site you visit.

Over 100 online content sites now use Kachingle. They are focused on topics ranging from news to investigative journalism to social justice, media analysis and trends, political commentary, environmental, and technology. A complete list is on Kachingle's web site.

I'd appreciate it if you joined Kachingle. You can do this by going to [link to Your Site] and placing your mouse over the Kachingle Medallion on the web page. In the drop down menu it will give you the option to "Join Now". Click on that to sign up on the Kachingle web site.

When you join Kachingle, you start a subscription, contributing $5 per month to your Kachingle account via PayPal. The first time you visit a Kachingle site that you want to support, you mouseover on that site's Kachingle Medallion and click on "Start kachingling". Your visits to that site are then recorded from that point on and at the end of each month, Kachingle proportionately distributes your $5 to all the sites you selected & viewed that month, based on the number of times you went to each.

Thanks for your support,

[your name]

STAGE FOUR - rewards programs

Consider developing a rewards program for frequent Kachinglers. (You can see who is kachingling your site by clicking See who's kachingling this site when you mouseover your medallion, or by visiting your Sites I Own page at Kachingle.com and clicking View Kachinglers.)

Think about what your frequent Kachinglers might value. Some ideas include:
• Blog or Tweet about frequent Kachinglers on your site
• Have someone important at your site, a famous supporter of the site, or a famous person in your virtual "community" thank your Kachinglers

We are developing a Kachingle.com rewards program, too. We'll let you know more as Kachingle evolves.

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Getting Paid

Here's how Kachinglers' Pay-Ins (their monthly deposits) become Payments to your site (based on their visits), which become Pay-Outs (Kachingle sending money to your PayPal account):

[1] Each Kachingler makes a monthly Pay-In (hardwired at $5 for now, but flexibility is coming soon!).

[2] At the end of each Kachingler's month, their Pay-In is distributed among the sites they've kachingled in proportional Payments based on Daily Visits.

[3] The Payments from your site's Kachinglers show up the Current Balance shown next to each Medallion on your Sites I Own page.

[4] At the end of each month for your Medallion (based on the date it was created), Kachingle checks that balance, and if it's over $3.35, a Pay-Out is processed, transferring the balance to your PayPal account, less 15% which Kachingle retains to cover the cost of processing payments (we pay all related PayPal fees) and our commission.

(Why $3.35? We figure your social cents Pay-Out should at least get you a grande iced latte at Starbucks!)

[5] If at the end of a given month, your Medallion balance hasn't reached the $3.35 threshold, that balance will roll to the next month until the threshold is reached.

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Using the Sites I Own tab

When you visit your Sites I Own tab, you can manage your Medallions, track all your Kachinglers, and see a history of your payments (with more detailed statistics coming soon). Here's how it works:



[1] - Tabs

Sites I Visit is where you can view and manage your own kachingling history and contributions to other sites.

Sites I Own (shown here) is where you can manage your Medallions, and view contributors and payments (with more statistics coming soon).

All Sites is where you can browse every site with a Kachingle Medallion or search for sites to Kachingle by keyword.

[2] - Add Site

Click "Add Site" to create a new Medallion for a site you own — or for another section of your site if you want to keep contributions separated by section, blogger, etc.

[3] - Site name and logo

Click on the logo to be taken to the site itself.

Click on the name to be taken to a Kachingle page describing the site and listing all the Kachinglers that support it.

[4] - Manage button

Click the Manage button to change or update the information you entered for this site when you created the Medallion: name, URL, description, email address, PayPal address, or logo.

[5] - URL, Medallion#, Status and Description

This area shows the Medallion Number and information you entered when you created (or updated) this Medallion. The Status shows whether you successfully tested the Medallion in the last stage of the setup process.

[6] - Kachingling statistics

This box shows the kachingling history for this site:
Kachinglers - the total number of contributors to your site
Total Pay-Outs - contributions Kachingle has already paid to you
Current Balance - contributions accumulated but not yet paid

This box also includes links to the data from your Medallion:
View Kachinglers - see stats on all your site's contributors
View Pay-Out History - see a history of your payments from Kachingle
View Statistics - (coming soon!) see charts on your daily visits by contributors and daily contributions collected

[7] - Sort options

Here you can choose how your kachingling history is listed on this page.

[8] - Profile

This box displays your own Kachingler profile information, and includes a link to Edit Settings, like your avatar, Display Name, etc.
(You can also edit your profile from the Settings link at the top of any Kachingle page.)

Still have questions about earning money with a Kachingle Medallion?

Browse the Sites I Own FAQ — to see answers to common questions from Site Owners

Ask a Question — in our Community Forum staffed by the Kachingle Team

Email Customer Care — if your question requires privacy or you don't want to join the Community

(Community Forums are hosted by GetSatisfaction.com and may require separate login)